When Maigret receives a visit from an old schoolmate whose mistress has been shot to death, he feels compelled to look into the case. Yet his friend is one of the suspects--along with the dead woman's four other lovers, each unknown to the others. The basis for a public television Mystery! presentation. Translated by Eileen Ellenbogen. Maigret is a registered trademark of the Estate of Georges Simenon.

“A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason.” —John Le Carré When a familiar face from Maigret's past brings him word of a mysterious killing, the Inspector jumps on the case When a long lost friend pays a visit to Maigret's office, he is shocked to learn that the man's roommate has been murdered. With the help of his old friend, Maigret delves into the life of the victim and finds a complex web of relationships that leads him to the culprit. Absorbing and impossible to predict, Maigret's Childhood Friend is a riveting mystery that reveals a new shade to the iconic detective.

Georges Simenon's 75 novels and 28 short stories that feature Chief Inspector Jules Maigret provide us with a great deal of information about the French police detective--but only in small, episodic doses. As readers become acquainted with Maigret one detail at a time, he slowly takes on a flesh-and-bone realism--not merely a character in a story, but someone we would like to meet in real life. This book presents all the canonical facts and details about the detective and his world in one place, presented with tabulations and analyses that enable a better understanding of the works and of Maigret himself.

Georges Simenon (1903-1989) was a phenomenally successful author of crime fiction. His 75 Maigret novels and 28 Maigret short stories were published between 1931 and 1972 to great international acclaim (he is the only non-anglophone crime writer to have achieved such renown). His Maigret stories are regarded by many as having established a new direction in crime fiction, emphasizing social and psychological portraiture rather than focussing on a puzzle to be solved or on "action." This book examines the importance of social class and social change in the Maigret stories, giving a particular emphasis to the early formative novels and the development of plot, characterization and setting. The author seeks to establish the extent to which Simenon's portrait of French society is historically accurate and the nature of the influence of the author's own class position and ideology on his fiction.

The essential guide to twentieth-century literature around the world For six decades the Penguin Modern Classics series has been an era-defining, ever-evolving series of books, encompassing works by modernist pioneers, avant-garde iconoclasts, radical visionaries and timeless storytellers. This reader's companion showcases every title published in the series so far, with more than 1,800 books and 600 authors, from Achebe and Adonis to Zamyatin and Zweig. It is the essential guide to twentieth-century literature around the world, and the companion volume to The Penguin Classics Book. Bursting with lively descriptions, surprising reading lists, key literary movements and over two thousand cover images, The Penguin Modern Classics Book is an invitation to dive in and explore the greatest literature of the last hundred years.

Maigret one day receives an anonymous letter written on extravagantly splendid stationery. Without giving further details, it states that a murder will be committed shortly and pleads for Maigret's help. Maigret, though used to letters from cranks that lead nowhere, is shaken. He has no trouble tracing the stationery to the house where it came from -- the sumptuous Paris establishment of an eminently successful expert in Maritime Law, who is surrounded by family, various office help, and household staff.

This book not only includes chapters on more than twenty new screen sleuths but also updates information on several detectives included in the first two volumes of Famous Movie Detectives. Author Michael Pitts also provides new material on sleuths in silent films and serials, as well as a listing of radio and television detective programs.

This is an encyclopedic work, arranged by broad categories and then by original authors, of literary pastiches in which fictional characters have reappeared in new works after the deaths of the authors that created them. It includes book series that have continued under a deceased writer's real or pen name, undisguised offshoots issued under the new writer's name, posthumous collaborations in which a deceased author's unfinished manuscript is completed by another writer, unauthorized pastiches, and "biographies" of literary characters. The authors and works are entered under the following categories: Action and Adventure, Classics (18th Century and Earlier), Classics (19th Century), Classics (20th Century), Crime and Mystery, Espionage, Fantasy and Horror, Humor, Juveniles (19th Century), Juveniles (20th Century), Poets, Pulps, Romances, Science Fiction and Westerns. Each original author entry includes a short biography, a list of original works, and information on the pastiches based on the author's characters.